1) Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to safety and rescue extraction of downed or injured law enforcement, military or tactical operations personnel from a hostile combat environment, and more particularly, to a dual handle drag strap that will allow a user in a combat situation to drag an injured person to safety without compromising the user's ability to maintain engagement with an enemy.
2) Description of Related Art
Today, tactical law enforcement and military personnel face more challenges than ever and the threats are increasingly more dangerous. Rescuers working to remove injured personnel in a hostile combat environment also face many challenges. Traditional methods of removing an injured person typically require three to four people on average to grab the injured person anyway they can and drag them to safety. These methods are time consuming, overly strenuous, unreliable, and expose the rescuers to increased damages as they lower their guard to rescue the injured person. Grabbing the protective vest or other gear of the injured person to drag them to safety can make it difficult to obtain sufficient leverage for moving quickly. Also, it is difficult to obtain a good grip and the section being grabbed may fail from the weight when the person is being dragged. Also, currently methods create unnecessarily longer exposure times on the “X” for the rescuers, subjecting both the rescuers and injured person to continued hostile fire. Further, current extraction methods tend to cause the rescuer to disengage from the enemy when attempting to grab the injured person, leading to potentially deadly results.
Further, depending on the personal protective gear worn by the injured person, it can be difficult to locate an attachment point for a drag strap. Accordingly, there is a need for a drag strap that can accommodate and adjust to work with or without a variety of protective gear while still providing a secure attachment to the injured person for rapid extraction.
It is also desirable to allow more than one person to use a single drag strap to rescue an injured person for decreased drag load on a single person and quicker extraction. Accordingly, there is a need to provide a drag strap with multiple handles for allowing more than one person to drag the injured person.
In short, prior methods of rapid extraction took more people, more time, and left the rescuer(s) and injured person exposed to the threat. Accordingly, a need was realized for more efficient ways to remove injured personnel that is quick, reliable, and limits dangerous exposure of the rescuers and the injured person during extraction.
Thus, it is an object of the present invention to provide a rapid extraction drag strap that allows for one or more people to drag a person to safety, but also reduces the amount of time and effort needed to do so.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a drag strap that is adjustable to accommodate variations in attachment methods for attaching to an injured person.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a drag strap that allows a rescuer to drag the injured person to a safe location without having to disengage his weapon from the enemy.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a drag strap that promotes a preferred posture for the rescuer to drag the injured person in an efficient manner.